 Click to see larger I like waterfalls, but they are pretty scarce in the flat lands of North Iowa. After a heavy rain the a few days ago I found this trickle of a waterfall at the Lime Creek Conservation Area. It probably won't last long. Click the image to see larger and watch the short video below.
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 A lightning storm moving across the farm fields toward our house and lighting up the sky last night. I took these from the back of our property looking out over the fields. Taken with a telephoto lens and cropped. The picture to the left was the last image - 2 or 3 miles away, before I headed inside. The storm was getting a bit too close. I have read that lightning can travel two miles (or more) across the ground during a ground-strike. Sound travels a mile in 4.7 seconds, so if you see the lightning and hear the boom in 10-15 seconds or less it is time to move to safety. The image on the left below is a single 8-second exposure taken a few seconds before the last image. The other two, apparently over a neighbors homestead, were several miles away. The farm is a little over a mile away. [Click images to see larger]     House Wren (click to see larger) A House Wren in our yard with a bit of fuzz to put in the nest box. We've had wrens in this nest box every year for many years. I don't know if they are the same bird or offspring, but the birdhouse never goes unoccupied. This year we had Chickadees nesting early. I peeked in occasionally and watched the chicks grow up. When they fledged the nest the House Wrens moved in. But first they removed, one mouth full at a time, every single bit of the large Chickadee nest. There was fur, hair and moss in clumps blowing all over the yard. The the Wrens started filling up the box with small sticks and then lining the nest with softer things like this fuzz that this adult is about to take in to the nest box.
We have at least four Wren nests in different parts of our yard this year (as well as many nest of many other bird species). I have seen chicks in two of the Wren nests. A great day for Dragonfly photos. All in one location at Pilot Knob State Park. This was during our 10 state parks in three days road trips. More about that later. [Click images to see larger.]     The storm passed to the north of us last night with many storm cells active with lightning. I didn't know which way to point the camera. Out on a lonely rural road, this storm cell was at least 30 miles away. It is a composite of five images taken with the telephoto lens and cropped. I took multiple 15 second exposures hoping to get a lightning strike in each exposure. I threw away many more images than I kept. The second image was one single image taken in the same sequence. The auto white balance sometimes does strange things with the color, [Click images to see larger.]
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Bruce's Blog
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July 2024
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